Rousseau - Discourse on Inequality

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men  (1754)


Unlike Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws - 1748), Rousseau did not want to detail how existing societies work, he wanted to determine the nature of society itself.  This makes Rousseau one of the founders of cultural anthropology. 


According to Rousseau; there had been four stages of human development:  

       1)  Man in nature; solitary hunter-gatherers (homo habilis in today's anthropology)

       2)  Man in small towns  

       3)  Man involved in agriculture and metallurgy

       4)  The forming of governments


Two principles (instincts) "prior to reason" (pre-societal human nature): 

      1)   our own welfare and preservation (amorie de soi, or self-love) 

      2)   a repugnance of seeing any living creature, especially our own species suffer pain or death. 

(This puts Rousseau is in the sentimentalist school of Enlightenment philosophers with Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Diderot).

The original man (in modern terms: hominoids) was not "bad" and there was no "good" or "evil" (morality).  There were plenty of resources; he had no need to harm others.  He wasn't self-reflective; he thought little of his past (regrets) or was suffered anxiety about his future.  He was emotionally at ease with himself.    

"His imagination paints nothing for him, his heart demands nothing of him... Nothing agitates his soul, which gives itself entirely to the feeling of its present existence."  

Pre-social man would be completely incapable of truly knowing himself, but he wouldn't need to.  He would simply be himself.  But modern man struggles to conform to society's demands, searching desperately and in vain for self-knowledge.  Rousseau said "The state of reflection is a state contrary to human nature, and the man who mediates is a depraved animal." 

As populations increased, men collected into groups to harness more resources.  Man's nature was first corrupted with the advent of private property (according to Rousseau, one man said "this is mine" and the other men were duped into believing him).  The division of labor was the second event that created human inequality (including slavery).  This led to disparities of wealth and governments were formed to protect these new institutions.  Man became more self-interested and less interested in the suffering of his fellows.

Notice the difference between Locke's and Rousseau's views of private property.

For Locke, God gave man the "natural right" to private property in the state of nature.  For Rousseau, private property was a product of society.  Private property is not a God-send to humanity, it is the source of misery. 

A century earlier, Blaise Pascal had claimed that ownership of property was the result of the radical sinfulness of human nature.  Rousseau stood that claim on its head by claiming that the problem was not natural, but a product of society; it was  produced by a deviation from his basic nature. 


Alienation from one's basic nature.

For Rousseau,  (sexual, monetary, social status) competition and inequality are intrinsic to every society.  The things we value most carry the seeds of their own subversion.  When societies were first formed, the family was at the center and it was based on "the sweetest emotions known to man, conjugal and paternal love."  But this began the inequality of the sexes and other deviations from man's basic nature...

As people congregated "... Each one began to look at the others and wanted to be looked at himself, and public esteem took on value.  The one who sang or danced the best, the most handsome, the strongest, the most skillful, the most eloquent, became the most esteemed... From these initial preferences were born on the one hand vanity and contempt, on the other hand shame and envy, and the fermentations caused by this new leaven eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence."   

With this comes the development of an artificial self-love, amour-propre, a view of oneself dependent on the view of others. 

This disparaging of society drew sarcastic replies from Voltaire, Diderot, and others.  The great majority of enlightenment thinkers had positive views of society, but recognizing many injustices, their project was to improve it.  Rousseau's view that society was the source of human misery set him apart from the other Enlightenment thinkers.  Rousseau's originality lies in his locating our problems in historical causes rather than defects of human nature. 

Rousseau also wanted to improve society.  He recognized that there was no going back to pre-social being, he had even stated his theory was just a thought experiment, he didn't know if such a time had ever existed.

But for Rousseau, it was not just a matter of new forms of governments and laws, man himself had to change.  Practices like seeking social esteem had to reevaluated, amour-propre needed to be reduced.  Society must be altered in a way that was more towards man's instinctive interest in others than in his own self-interest.       

The Second Discourse anticipates Sigmund Freud's 1930 book Civilization and Its Discontents about the clash between the individual and the expectations of society and marks Rousseau as an important figure in the development of modern psychology. 

Rousseau's next projects were aimed at finding an authentic self beneath the layers of role playing that society demands.  This search for authenticity anticipates the work of 20th century existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre.